It moves away from the typical murder mystery shenanigans to bringing in a few new characters. Episode 7 basically shouts 'This series is a homage, deconstruction, and love letter to the entire mystery novel genre!', and it's really beginning to tickle my fancy bone. Just the way things have been set up during the entire series, both plot points and themes, and how a lot of it finally pays off is beautiful. The person who wrote all this is a damn genius, and I begin to lament how much of a timesink it takes to really get into it, because that same amount of time would surely turn off lots of other people.
The whole 'who is Beatrice' question isn't still really outright answered here, but it makes it a lot more clear now, and some previous questions start to get tied up. Beatrice = Shanon = Kanon, all separate personalities of Yasu
I mentioned before that the game sort of plays with 'are the scenarios we see actually occurring thanks to magic, or are they instead basically fanfics made up by people after the fact'. The fact the island blew up in a massive explosion, with only one survivor who refused to say anything up to her death, really helps push it towards the latter. However, another theme of the series is basically 'if you believe in magic then when lacking decisive proof that it's not magic, then it is indeed magic'. So a sop still to those believing in magic, not to mention it's usually been the more 'optimistic' scenario for a few characters.
In Episode 7's extra scenes, it also offers a potential 'true events' to the murder mystery. I did not see that coming. Damn. But Battler's fate was strangely left unseen in it.
For Episode 8, I guess there'll be a final showdown between Bernkastel/Aurora vs Battler/Beato, with a few potential pieces like Ange, Will, Leon, and Eva throw in. Not sure if Lambdadelta and Erika will return. Besides some more details around 'who is Beatrice', there's still a few other things to tie up. The circumstances of Battler's birth that Rudolf was gonna tell him about twice but got killed before he could say that basically will outright say Kyrie is his birth mother, the meaning of the second half of 07151129 (unless I missed something?), etc. Also, I expect some more usage of the Gold Truth because it hasn't had as much usage as it should for such a hugely important plot macguffin.
On another note...there is a riddle, the 'witch's epitaph', that has been a central part of the game off-and-on since the very first episode. In this episode, it's finally solved for the sake of the readers, though several characters have solved it in multiple scenarios prior. The riddle is actually fairly well written and devious in its presentation, and it is in fact solvable...in Japanese, if you know where to start looking. The very first line to start with solving the entire riddle from that hinges on the riddle creator's hometown, and everyone except for those who solved the riddle were all barking up the wrong tree from the start. There was literally one single throwaway hint at the riddler's true hometown in the entire series thus far (that his favorite food was areca nuts, which indicates he lived in Taiwan prior to the Japanese getting kicked out in World War II).
There is some wordplay in Japanese on two occasions, as well. The first requires a different, more archaic reading of one name and how it becomes Romanised. The second is an alternate reading of a kanji. Both are absolutely essential. There was a fan translation of the games as they released episode by episode, which was actually in the end brought on-board and polished up for an official English release. They don't even try to translate the first wordplay. For the second wordplay, the fan translation had no idea in the beginning it was crucial, and so it gets omitted entirely. Once the series as a whole was released, the line in question where the wordplay is made adds a new half a line as a clue that can be deciphered in English!
Supposedly, the Japanese fanbase was able to brute-force decipher the riddle earlier on. I can believe that. With my lack of Japanese history knowledge and inability to understand moonspeak, it would be impossible.